This Wasn't Forecast!

After rather a late night and not a good sleep I got up early to drive to Keswick. A friend of mine is planning a Bob Graham Round and we were going to have a recce of Leg 1, Keswick to Threlkeld via Skiddaw, Great Calva and Blencathra.

We arrived to low cloud and rain which got worse as we climbed, by the time we got to the top of Skiddaw the wind was gale force and trying to rip our clothes apart, we were almost getting blown over and couldn't talk, the rain was stinging.

We managed to get out of the wind heading towards Calva but I was wet through and struggling to warm up, at the track in the bottom of the valley with little sign of the promised improvement in the weather I made the decision that it wouldn't be safe for me to carry on, the others agreed that the conditions weren't good so we ran back down the track past Skiddaw House to Keswick where we changed and warmed ourselves with soup.

Despite the change of route we still clocked 12.5 miles in under 3 hours, we were bang on schedule at the top of Skiddaw and Ian who is training for the BG was not too disappointed having done the 3 peaks race yesterday.

This picture taken on the way home shows where we would have come down Blencathra had we completed the route. I notice that IWC and Snips and Snaps had better weather yesterday when they were on top of Blencathra!

I think I might have earned a beer this evening